Five Bodies in a California Reservoir Linked to Los Angeles Kidnap-for-Ransom Ring
Federal prosecutors unsealed kidnapping charges against Iouri Mikhel, Jurijus Kadamovas and two other men. The victims had been taken from the city's émigré community.
Published
Five people taken from Los Angeles's émigré community had been found in a Northern California reservoir. On March 21, 2002, federal prosecutors unsealed kidnapping charges against the men they blamed.
The bodies of four men and one woman, all of Eastern European descent, had been recovered from the New Melones Reservoir near Stockton. They were identified as Georgy Safiev, Alexander Umansky, Meyer Muscatel, Nick Kharabadze and Rita Peckler. Indictments returned on March 5 but kept secret until that Thursday charged four men, Iouri Mikhel, Jurijus Kadamovas, Petro Krylov and Ainar Altmanis, in two of the kidnappings. All four had been arrested by the FBI in mid-February, and a spokesman for the U.S. attorney's office, Thom Mrozek, said the announcement had been delayed for fear of compromising the investigation. No murder charges had yet been filed.
Mikhel and Kadamovas were charged with kidnapping Umansky, who disappeared on December 13, 2001, and whose body had been recovered that Monday, and with demanding $234,628 for his release. Krylov and Altmanis were charged with aiding and abetting. The indictment also accused Mikhel and Kadamovas of holding Safiev, a businessman who vanished from his Beverly Hills office on January 20, as a hostage. In all, up to $5 million had been demanded and about $1.2 million paid, according to the indictment. Two more men were charged with receiving and paying out the ransom money sent by Umansky's family.
A federal law enforcement source said the three other deaths would be linked to the same group, and that the kidnappers appeared never to have intended to return their victims alive. Muscatel, a developer, had been found first, by a father and son coming home from a fishing trip, near the Parrotts Ferry Bridge. Altmanis later confessed and helped the FBI find the other four.
Mikhel, a Russian, and Kadamovas, a Lithuanian, were later convicted of hostage taking resulting in death and sentenced to death, and the appeals court found that together they had killed all five. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit upheld their convictions and sentences in 2018.
The federal appeals court spelled two of the victims' names Rita Pekler and George Safiev, while CNN's report of the charges used Rita Peckler and Georgy Safiev.
Sources
- Five California bodies linked to Russian Mafia, CNN
- United States v. Mikhel and Kadamovas, Nos. 07-99008, 07-99009 (9th Cir.), opinion, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit (via govinfo.gov)